Lifeline
by kneipho
Summary: Response to Purgatory. Goren's POV during Alex's big "You're the genius" speech.


Disclaimer: No characters belong to me, the thoughts, however are mine alone. No profit made. No harm intended.

Title: Lifeline  
Author: kneipho  
Beta: My Man Godfry (Any errors you unearth are mine, not his.)  
Rating: T  
Fandom: Law and Order: Criminal Intent  
Character/Pairing Codes: B/A, Bobby's POV  
Spoiler Alert: _Endgame, Amends, Smile_ and _Purgatory _  
Warning: Another strange _CI_ characterization, in which poor Robert Goren is the unfortuantely the victim.

Response to _Purgatory._ Goren's POV during Alex's big "You're the genius" speech. An echo of, rather than a sequel to, "Tempered Glass".

* * *

I don't have enough words. My throat is working, my mouth is moving, and yet, I barely make a sound. I try to apologize, explain why I played the game this way, but she's in no mood to listen. Her face unfolding into set planes of resentment, of betrayal before my eyes. All I want to do is grab her hands and kiss the backs of them, beg her to forgive me. Bury my face in the crook of her neck and plead with her not to be angry —like a little kid who has been caught doing something wrong and can't abide the idea that he's in trouble. The compulsion is so eerily reminiscent of feelings engendered during the final confrontations in those last days with my mother, I can't seem to stop my brain from wrapping around the psychological implications. In some ways it's all so very twisted, so very strange.

She's yelling at me, yelling without screaming. Lecturing me with force, while Stoat contemplates his fate just beyond the wall in Interragation. 1 Her arms, crossed vice-tight, flatten her breasts while she vents her spleen. She tells me, she could have blown my head off, reminds me how she's had my back these all these years. I stand tall. I look her in the eye. They way I would with any other cop I respect on the Force. Take my lumps like the a man I am, and I try not to panic as she points out how many times she covered for me.

How many times she'd lied.

The seriousness of that statement scares the crap out of me and I feel myself going numb. I count the sudden lack of sensation as a blessing. It makes it all that much easier to keep my face blank, my emotions under wraps while she lays into me —makes it all that much easier to keep my voice calm. I always let them drag me into the weeds, my emotions, especially with Eames. So, I purposely sink even deeper into myself. I play iceberg. Seven-eighths of me submerged beneath the surface, while her words, her sentences roll about, amalgamate inside my head. I don't ever want to hurt her, not any more than I already have. And working with me, pairing up with 'that wack-job detective' has done enough damage to her career. She pretends she doesn't bother her, behaves as if it doesn't matter, but it does. I know it does and that fact makes me crazy. She's my partner. Part of my job is to protect her, not screw with her reputation. It's exactly why I kept her out of the loop. What I mean when I say that there are rules.

I look down at this at this little person, this petite ball of livid sarcasm who has just finished railing at me. I watch her as she turns her back and walks away. Clearly, she's not getting it. Maybe she doesn't want to. In her place, I can't say for certain that I would.

But I know one thing.

I want my shield back and I'll do exactly as I'm told to get it. Rat out bad cops. Lead an expedition down the jungle of all my childhood traumas with Olivet. 2 Learn my lessons. I'll be a good boy. I'll follow the all rules. Being a detective is what I'm made for. The only time when I'm allowed to put all the puzzle pieces I can't stop myself from seeing everywhere together and do something good. It's all I know. It's my tether to a sane world, an ordered life —not the private world, the private mess I so stupidly let bleed though in recent years. A world I can't seem to bring into sync by myself no matter how hard I try.

These last five months, I've lived in Purgatory. An experience I don't ever plan to repeat. Never in my life have been so deep inside the hole. I need it. The job. I need to work Major Case. I tell myself Alex knows that I can't do it —she knows I can't do it...

Not without her.

* * *

Lifeline, Copyright (c) 2008 kneipho

1. Former Detective Mike Stoat, the quasi-sympathetic baddie-boy who "befriends" our beloved Bobby G. in _Purgatory_.

2. Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, a clinical psychologist in the _Law & Order_ Universe.


End file.
